Robert Fulford: Death, like life, never stops changing, nor do our attitudes toward it

“Death renders all equal,” wrote Claudian. How each one of us relates to death, however, is individual, and always changing — as we mature; as we contemplate life, and death, around us; and as society changes. In this special edition of the National Post, we present stories and columns looking at the different ways we see, and prepare for, the Great Equalizer. To read the complete series, click here.

Like life, death never stops changing. Every generation faces new facts about the end of life. Every generation thinks about it in a different way.

Fifty years ago, a Canadian who lived to 100 was a news item and the recipient of a letter from the Queen. Today Canada has about 6,000 centenarians and their number increases by roughly 1,000 a year. A century ago, the death of a child was an expected part of family life; today we are appalled and outraged when it happens. Fifty years ago, suicide was universally abhorred and treated as a crime, if not a sin. Today the right to die, which means suicide for a good reason, is legal in several countries and American states; it may soon be a part of Canadian life.

Our attitude to death might strike our grandparents as inconsistent. We may or may not be terrified by it, but in choosing our entertainment we embrace it with delight. Each night of the week a small army of actors is gunned down in our living rooms. That’s one way the present moment is unique in the history of the human race. People once defended violence in TV by citing the killings in the Bible, Shakespeare and ancient Greek drama. But earlier forms of fictional death usually carried a heavy charge of meaning and often illuminated moral issues. The casual, often motiveless slaughter we watch now on TV is different. And in quantity it dwarfs the literature and drama of previous millennia.

It is not too much to say that death has become the core of popular culture. It appears that broadcasters and audiences agree that this is how it should be. We regret the reality of death, we do all we can to put it off, but clearly we find it satisfying to contemplate, often.

The young 21st century has expanded another death-related phenomenon: Huge audiences are attracted to narratives based on the notion that vampires live among us, bringing with them the exotic desires of their kind. These elaborate, often brilliantly composed stories echo superstitions of the past. In a science-dominated world they cling to the Gothic imagination of our ancestors.

As our view of death changes — and this special edition of the National Post will look at how our relationship with death continues to change — we alter our formal responses to it. A few decades ago, every funeral was solemn. Men wore black ties and long faces, women cried, unsmiling clergy delivered deadly serious eulogies. Spouses never took part: They were assumed to be so deep in mourning that they couldn’t speak.

Today, funerals can be a time for telling jokes and for light-hearted accounts of the dead individual’s eccentricities. Widows and widowers speak their own tributes if they care to. Sometimes we change the name of the event and call it “a celebration of the life” of the deceased, as if we had all decided not to let ourselves be too downcast. We work hard to keep death in perspective.

We talk more freely about death than we did a few generations ago but there remain certain aspects of it that we find hard to face. One that has always confused me is death by accident. While we profoundly believe in the value of human life, more than 2,000 Canadians a year die in motor vehicle accidents. Each death devastates people close to the victim, diminishing their lives forever. Yet the numbers register with most of us as no more than statistics. What if eight Canadian passenger planes fell to the ground annually, each killing 250 humans? If that happened, flying would soon be suspended until we found a way to make it safer.

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So, then, how can we tolerate the cruelty of road traffic? Because we are used to it. Unknowingly, we have built that cause of death into our moral system. It has become what historians call an unspoken assumption. We now consider those numbers normal.

As an 81-year-old, I naturally think more about death than young people do. It can’t be too far in the future. But contemplating what is to come makes me also think about all that has happened. You gain a lot by living eight decades, but you can also lose a lot.

You outlive nearly all of your elders, most of your contemporaries and even some of your younger friends. I find this far more painful than the failings of my body. Attending a funeral often means carrying home a sense of loss, of absence, that never disappears.

In an old man, a good memory like mine (though it’s weakening on the short-term side) can lead to melancholy thoughts. Memory makes you realize how much you miss certain people: Their wisdom, their laughter, their quirks, the well of affection you shared. Luis Buñuel, the great film director, kept a small pad on which he listed all the people he liked who had died. I couldn’t bear that and, in any case, don’t need it: One of my most cherished mentors died four decades ago and when I write on a favourite subject of his, I wonder what he would think of my piece. Sometimes I even work out his reactions in detail.

What I miss is the chance to talk to him and many others. I can recall the details of conversations I had with them but I want more: To revisit arguments, trade gossip, work over the great and small events of the world.

There are whole platoons of people among the missing. For instance, I can remember the reaction of my fellow sports writers when I wrote my first (also my last) story on the caber toss, the event in which Scots athletes throw giant wooden poles into the distance. I informed sports-page readers that this event had strong “cultural connotations,” a phrase my co-workers rightly found pretentious.

As an 81-year-old, I naturally think more about death than young people do

This was 60 years ago and I remember in detail all those people, nine men and one woman, each of them 10 or 15 years older than I and therefore unlikely to be reachable by phone at this time.

I remember where we all sat in our sports department, what they looked like, the advice they gave me. An assistant sports editor, a man of infinite gentleness, told me it was a crime to spell names incorrectly, especially names of people rarely mentioned in print; they would be hurt and would never forget it. Those journalists were my first colleagues and my teachers; a certain part of me loves them still.

A dear friend died just recently and, at least twice a week since, I have thought of something I wanted to tell him or ask him; a second later I remember the truth. That’s a certain kind of loneliness. It accrues and deepens.

But none of this is to be considered a complaint. Breathing and thinking, and still able to operate this miraculous instrument invented for my use in Silicon Valley — I find that, all things considered, there’s a great deal of pleasure in being old.

Many of us say that we don’t fear death. Our time in history is predominantly secular, which means that it’s relatively easy to consider dying simply a last page. We like to think of death visiting us in a relaxed, generous mood. Or we could settle for its appearance during sleep: The father of a friend of mine was reading in bed, felt sleepy, put his glasses on the bedside table, fell asleep and did not wake up. Ideal, in its way.

But it can be horrible. I don’t fear death but I’m terrified of painful and boring months (or even years) in palliative care. What if joy and wonder disappear, but a version of life endures? People can lose the ability to hear or talk. Their decline severs connections with spouses, children and friends. What if I can’t exchange words with anyone? What if I can’t read? If I can’t watch my grandchildren grow, and laugh with them, I won’t truly be alive. If able, I will earnestly request medical help to end to my life.

I don’t fear death but I’m terrified of painful and boring months (or even years) in palliative care

In 1970, I contributed a piece called “The Future of Death” to a book of essays that Stephen Clarkson edited, Vision 2020: Fifty Canadians in Search of a Future. I predicted that by the year 2020, death would be far better managed: “One imagines people openly discussing their deaths, deciding reasonably and honestly the point at which their lives should finish.” In 1970, no one objected to those sentiments, but 20 years later a man in Kamloops, B.C., discovered my essay reprinted in a school reader. He spent two years petitioning federal and provincial ministers to have me prosecuted for counselling suicide, to no avail. He argued that students would read it and kill themselves.

I thought of him earlier this month and wondered if the B.C Court of Appeal gladdened his heart when it upheld the ban on medically assisted suicide. Still, I’m guessing that the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Lance Finch is closer to the emerging national consensus: “The point at which the meaning of life is lost, when life’s positive attributes are so diminished as to render life valueless” is a personal decision we should all have the right to make for ourselves.

The Quebec legislature has on the order paper a bill allowing medical assistance for suicide. The Manitoba health minister, Theresa Oswald, says “This is a conversation whose time has come.” Other health ministers are moving in the same direction. Perhaps I wasn’t overly optimistic when I suggested that it might be resolved by 2020.

There was a time when most politicians found euthanasia far too controversial even to mention. But recent decades have eliminated many once-banned topics and this one has finally made its way to the surface. It appears that generations of free speech and anxious argument have actually led to improvements in certain crucial aspects of life, including even, notably, death.